The Nomadic Alternative – Page 166

was simply an extension of the same principle. Most hunting peoples

are patrilocal, that is to say, the women are imported from outside

and live with their husband's people. This has an obvious advantage.

A man's knowledge of his hunting ground and the behaviour of the

game in it is the product of many years' hard won experience. To

start all over again at the time of his marriage would be pointless.

But after a few weeks of experience a bride can learn from her new

companions what inert food is available in the local larder.

Let us also remember that the Myth of the Journey describes the

same situation. The young hero leaves home, fights the monster in

a far-off land, and receives the reward of his bride, whom he brings

back to his people. A young hunter leaves his own band, "marries

far", stays some time with his parents-in-law before returning to

his own hunting ground. He goes to get his woman as a petitioner,

not a rapist. But once the size of the band swells beyond the level

of the minimum, the delicate political balance is disrupted. Many

South American hunting tribes move about in numbers of three hundred

or more. Protection from wild beasts is assured by sizes alone.

So aspiring heroes raid their neighbours to grab at fresh women,

proving their virility to their new wives by killing their former

husbands. Similarly, as Montaigne wrote of the Cannibals, men

display "valour against their enemies, then lovingness unto their

wifes".

Travel does not simply broaden the mind. It makes the mind. Man's

gut reaction to the horizon - the compulsion to know and understand

what lies beyond it - is the product of the intellect and essential

for the maintenance of the intellect. Economic considerations, like

the food quest, pall in significance beside his need to fulfil him-

self in exchanges with outsiders. When at last the Emperor of Han

China and the ruler of the Hsiung-Nu nomads made peace, they

stipulated that both peoples should pass freely between the two

lands. "To allow men to come and go without hindrance is the Way

of Heaven."